boulevard of broken dreams
by Holly Chase
Summary: He's just got to get used to being alone. Dedicated to Nico fans everywhere.


**A/N: Guess what?! Another addition to my Nico collection! Please read and review!**

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**_boulevard of broken dreams:_**

_I walk a lonely road/The only one that I have ever known/Don't know where it goes/But it's home to me and I walk alone/I walk this empty street/On the Boulevard of Broken Dreams/When the city sleeps/And I'm the only one and I walk alone._

_- Green Day_

A shadowed figure walks along the pavement, scuffing their shoes on the concrete. He may have glanced left or right, it was impossible in the dense fog that seems to cling to him like mist. The person sticks to a straight line, moving with OCD purpose that gives him an odd look. Suddenly he (for Chloe could see his face now) swings and walks towards the café where she is cleaning the window table. His face is pale from what she can see from under the brown-red grunge, that she assumes to be mud, and through the misty-rain. _Olivia's_ is quiet today and she is the only waitress so she pauses tolerantly by the doors for the bells to ring their happy jingle. It doesn't come. Chloe cautiously looks around the corner through the glass. Perhaps he had not walked to the doors of _Olivia's _and had just been crossing the road, she muses.

The boy stands on the other side of the glass, his head bowed against the rain that seems to be battering against him with extra force. As she watches, the boy, who seems younger than he did at first glance, raises his gaze. Chloe steps towards the door and then stops. A crawling sensation tells her not to move forwards, the boy's dark eyes bare into hers and fills her with the wish that she can run from the intensity. His eyes are a strange shade of brown, or grey; seemingly so dark that they appear black but that's not possible, Chloe had forced herself to watch a documentary on the illusions of the human mind and body and this had been a key article. His shadowy hair blows in a soaked, windswept mess to the left, pointed features showed an Italian background with a full mouth, almond eyes and high cheek-bones that are accented a little too much for a child. Slim brows, rarely seen on a boy, are furrowed and a slight gap between two teeth makes him seem less like a strange boy and more like a troubled child. Chloe's heart softens automatically, being unable to have children herself has made her protective over everything and everyone she deems 'abandoned' or 'adorable'. This child, after a good scrub and a trip to the shops would fit neatly into both categories, she thinks. Like her nephew.

She reaches for the handle, planning already the conversation that will surely follow, but stops as the boy shakes his head. He mouths something at her. Chloe frowns and he mouths again, this time she catches the movements.

_'Chloe Peters?'_

With slight bewilderment she nods her head in recognition at the name. How does this boy know her? She is certain she has never met him before; she would have remembered him. The boy squints to his left that, to her frustration, is blocked by a wall and then takes a piece of crumpled paper from his pocket. He shields the paper with his hand to stop the rain from drenching it immediately, pauses momentarily and then bends and pushes the scrap under the door. Curious, she picks it up. Scrawled across it in large misspelt words is printed:

_Left, straight, left, continue on until the pub with the white horse and the lion, left and down the right alley. Sorry._

She glances up from the puzzling sentences at the boy only to find that he's no longer there. She opens the door, the bells ringing merrily, and stands outside in the rain which seems to only be drizzling now. Confused she spins around looking down the flat roads for the boy dressed in black. Even in the fog one thing is clear to Chloe, the boy has simply vanished in the five seconds it has taken for her to read the note and open the door. She looks down at the note again, then back at the empty café; it wouldn't hurt to close a few minutes early, she supposes before pulling on a pair of trainers and turning left.

Chloe sobs into her brother's arms; their tears leave salty tracks down their faces but neither of them can even care enough to wipe them away. A picture of Samuel's son smiles down at them, like the angel he was sure to be. Chloe feels as though everything wonderful in her life has shriveled up and she knows her brother must feel a thousand times worse. As she cries and howls not once does the boy who gave her directions to the body of her nephew cross her mind. She doesn't think about him again until the day she dies when a boy looks through the glass at her. He's blond with grey eyes, but has the same gap tooth and she wonders how she could have forgotten about the boy who stood behind a layer of glass and cared enough to write sorry at the end of the note. She ponders that maybe he could have been a Guardian Angel sent from God; that would explain how he seemed to melt into the shadows. She is very old and looking forwards to being at peace, but even as she closes her eyes one final time she could have sworn that she felt the intense gaze of the young boy in the rain once again.

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The boy walks, he may look left or right, even he can't really tell any more. He draws his aviator jacket close around his body. His belly aches in hunger and he can feel his ribs beginning to press out of his skin. A tiny feeling of warmth flickers deep in his chest as the rain clouds seem to follow him along with the whirling shrouds of mist and shadows. Minos swirls in and out of visibility, remaining silent as his Master shivers in the cold. The boy is deaf to the shouts and noises of San Francisco at night; the ghost King Minos may walk by his side, but to the humans he looks like another runaway, alone in a wide, wide world. He presses his hand to a carved symbol in a wall and a doorway takes the place of bricks. The duo of man and spirit slip into the uncovered passage where no mortal can follow. Not that anyone notices the boy disappear (they wouldn't care either); for in a world of busy people another vanished runaway isn't a big deal.

Nico stares up at the closing gap where he has entered the Labyrinth. A small part of him listens hopefully for a sound of surprise as someone notices that he has just vanished. It doesn't come. He sighs, before turning and following Minos down a wallpapered corridor. He's just got to get used to being alone.


End file.
